I nominate all the State and local government officials who took people’s labor rights during the pandemic without the payment of just compensation. In a nutshell, my thesis is that labor is property and that lockdown orders thus constitute a taking of property under the Takings Clause. I sketch my simple theory of Lockean lockdown takings in my most recent paper “The Law of Self-Ownership,” which is available here via SSRN. Below the fold is the table of contents of my paper:

Introduction

I. A Legal Anomaly

II. Labor as Property

III. Against Self-Ownership? 

A.    Sophistry and Self-Reference: Kant’s Critique of Self-Ownership

B.    Barbara Fried’s Critique: The Problem of Competing Conceptions of Self-Ownership

C.    The Ghost of Ronald Coase: The Problem of Minor Intrusions (Sobel’s Paradox)

D.    Children and Non-Human Animals: The Problem of Special Cases

E.    Communitarian Critiques

IV. A Survey of Lockdown Takings in the United States

V.  Takings of Labor: A Theory of Lockean Takings

A.    The Reciprocal Nature of the Pandemic Problem

B.    Transaction Cost Economics

C.    Response to Ilya Somin

D.    Lockdowns under Kelo

E.    Communitarian Critique Redux

VI. Recent Coronavirus Takings Jurisprudence

Conclusion

Bibliography